The way in which the great mental movement of our age towards a more complete recognition of natural order is affecting human intercourse may be defined in a few words. If the movement were at an equal rate of advance for all civilized people they would be perfectly agreed amongst themselves at any one point of time, as it would be settled which events were natural in their origin and which were due to the interposition of Divine or diabolical agency. Living people would differ in opinion from their predecessors, but they would not differ from each other. The change, however, though visible and important, is not by any means uniform, so that a guest sitting at dinner may have on his right hand a lady who sees supernatural interferences in many things, and on his left a student of science who is firmly convinced that there are no supernatural interferences in the present, and that there never have been any in the past. Private opinion, out of which public opinion slowly and gradually forms itself, is in our time in a state of complete anarchy, because two opposite doctrines are held loosely, and one or the other is taken up as it happens to seem appropriate. The interpositions of Providence are recognized or rejected according to political or personal bias. The French Imperialists saw the Divine vengeance in the death of Gambetta, whilst in their view the death of Napoleon III. was the natural termination of his disease, and that of the Prince Imperial a simple accident, due to the carelessness of his English companions. Personal bias shows itself in the belief, often held by men occupying positions of importance, that they are necessary, at least for a time, to fulfil the intentions of Providence. Napoleon III. said in a moment of emotion, “So long as I am needed I am invulnerable; but when my hour comes I shall be broken like glass!” Even in private life a man will sometimes think, “I am so necessary to my wife and family that Providence will not remove me,” though every newspaper reports the deaths of fathers who leave their families destitute. Sometimes men believe that Providence takes the same view of their enterprises that they themselves take; and when a great enterprise is drawing near to its termination they feel assured that supernatural power will protect them till it is quite concluded, but they believe that the enterprises of other men are exposed to all the natural risks. When Mr. Gifford Palgrave was wrecked in the sea of Oman, he was for some time in an open boat, and thus describes his situation: “All depended on the steerage, and on the balance and support afforded by the oars, and even more still on the Providence of Him who made the deep; nor indeed could I get myself to think that He had brought me thus far to let me drown just at the end of my journey, and in so very unsatisfactory a way too; for had we then gone down, what news of the event off Sowadah would ever have reached home, or when?—so that altogether I felt confident of getting somehow or other on shore, though by what means I did not exactly know.” Here the writer thinks of his own enterprise as deserving Divine solicitude, but does not attach the same importance to the humbler enterprises of the six passengers who went down with the vessel. I cannot help thinking, too, of the poor passenger Ibraheem, who swam to the boat and begged so piteously to be taken in, when a sailor “loosened his grasp by main force and flung him back into the sea, where he disappeared forever.” Neither can I forget the four who imprudently plunged from the boat and perished. We may well believe that these lost ones would have been unable to write such a delightful and instructive book as Mr. Palgrave’s “Travels in Arabia,” yet they must have had their own humble interests in life, their own little objects and enterprises.
The calculation that Providence would spare a traveller towards the close of a long journey may be mistaken, but it is pious; it affords an opportunity for the exercise of devout emotion which the scientific thinker would miss. If Mr. Herbert Spencer had been placed in the same situation he would, no doubt, have felt the most perfect confidence that the order of nature would not be disturbed, that even in such a turmoil of winds and waters the laws of buoyancy and stability would be observed in every motion of the boat to the millionth of an inch; but he would not have considered himself likely to escape death on account of the important nature of his undertakings. Mr. Spencer’s way of judging the situation as one of equal peril for himself and his humble companions would have been more reasonable, but at the same time he would have lost that opportunity for special and personal gratitude which Mr. Palgrave enjoyed when he believed himself to be supernaturally protected. The curious inconsistency of the common French expression, “C’est un hasard providentiel” is another example of the present state of thought on the question. A Frenchman is upset from a carriage, breaks no bones, and stands up, exclaiming, as he dusts himself, “It was un hasard vraiment providentiel that I was not lamed for life.” It is plain that if his escape was providential it could not be accidental at the same time, yet in spite of the obvious inconsistency of his expression there is piety in his choice of an adjective.
The distinction, as it has usually been understood hitherto, between religious and non-religious explanations of what happens, is that the religious person believes that events happen by supernatural direction, and he is only thinking religiously so long as he thinks in that manner; whilst the non-religious theory is that events happen by natural sequence, and so long as a person thinks in this manner, his mind is acting non-religiously, whatever may be his religious profession. “To study the universe as it is manifested to us; to ascertain by patient inquiry the order of the manifestations; to discover that the manifestations are connected with one another after regular ways in time and space; and, after repeated failures, to give up as futile the attempt to understand the power manifested, is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the character of religious is claimed by those who figure to themselves a Creator moved by motives like their own; who conceive themselves as seeing through His designs, and who even speak of Him as though He laid plans to outwit the Devil!”
Yes, this is a true account of the way in which the words irreligious and religious have always been used and there does not appear to be any necessity for altering their signification. Every event which is transferred, in human opinion, from supernatural to natural action is transferred from the domain of religion to that of science; and it is because such transferrences have been so frequent in our time that we are becoming so much less religious than our forefathers were. In how many things is the modern man perfectly irreligious! He is so in everything that relates to applied science, to steam, telegraphy, photography, metallurgy, agriculture, manufactures. He has not the slightest belief in spiritual intervention, either for or against him, in these material processes. He is beginning to be equally irreligious in government. Modern politicians have been accused of thinking that God cannot govern, but that is not a true account of their opinion. What they really think is that government is an application of science to the direction of national life, in which no invisible powers will either thwart a ruler in that which he does wisely, or shield him from the evil consequences of his errors.
But though we are less religious than our ancestors because we believe less in the interferences of the supernatural, do we deserve censure for our way of understanding the world? Certainly not. Was Nikias a proper object of praise because the eclipse seen by him at Syracuse seemed a warning from the gods; and was Wolseley a proper object of blame because the comet seen by him on the Egyptian plain was without a Divine message? Both these opinions are quite outside of merit, although the older opinion was in the highest degree religious, and the later one is not religious in the least. Such changes simply indicate a gradual revolution in man’s conception of the universe, which is the result of more accurate knowledge. So why not accept the fact, why not admit that we have really become less religious? Possibly we have a compensation, a gain equivalent to our loss. If the gods do not speak to us by signs in the heavens; if the entrails of victims and the flight of birds no longer tell us when to march to battle and where to remain inactive in our tents; if the oracle is silent at Delos, and the ark lost to Jerusalem; if we are pilgrims to no shrine; if we drink of no sacred fountain and plunge into no holy stream; if all the special sanctities once reverenced by humanity are unable any longer to awaken our dead enthusiasm, have we gained nothing in exchange for the many religious excitements that we have lost? Yes, we have gained a keener interest in the natural order, and a knowledge of it at once more accurate and more extensive, a gain that Greek and Jew might well have envied us, and which a few of their keener spirits most ardently desired. Our passion for natural knowledge is not a devout emotion, and therefore it is not religious; but it is a noble and a fruitful passion nevertheless, and by it our eyes are opened. The good Saint Bernard had his own saintly qualities; but for us the qualities of a De Saussure are not without their worth. Saint Bernard, in the perfection of ancient piety, travelling a whole day by the lake of Geneva without seeing it, too much absorbed by devout meditation to perceive anything terrestrial, was blinded by his piety, and might with equal profit have stayed in his monastic cell. De Saussure was a man of our own time. Never, in his writings, do you meet with any allusion to supernatural interferences (except once or twice in pity for popular superstitions); but fancy De Saussure passing the lake of Geneva, or any other work of nature, without seeing it! His life was spent in the continual study of the natural world; and this study was to him so vigorous an exercise for the mind, and so strict a discipline, that he found in it a means of moral and even of physical improvement. There is no trace in his writings of what is called devout emotion, but the bright light of intelligent admiration illumines every page; and when he came to die, if he could not look back, like Saint Bernard, upon what is especially supposed to be a religious life, he could look back upon many years wisely and well spent in the study of that nature of which Saint Bernard scarcely knew more than the mule that carried him.
ESSAY XVI.
ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH.
In the art of painting there are two opposite ways of dealing with natural color. It may be intensified, or it may be translated by tints of inferior chromatic force. In either case the picture may be perfectly harmonious, provided only that the same principle of interpretation be consistently followed throughout.